No...
But I would say the same about members of the president's same political party leveraging their power in the Senate to compel private social media companies to make changes to content moderation policies in order to benefit their team.
Sure, and we can discuss that too if you want. But specifically here, I am hoping we can both see the dangers in allowing a president or prime minister to extort other nations and allies, by using his position and the country's assets to get other nations to falsely investigate or pretend to investigate the president's political opponent before an upcoming election.
This is very undemocratic, very swampy and should be strongly stopped. This is forcing other nations to illegally interfere in your elections.
That door's been open for a while. Maybe not "flung wide open", but open enough for people in high positions to leverage advantages.
In terms of people who've been, shall we say "endorsed" by foreign entities, that certainly didn't start with Trump.
Do you have any specific references or links where another past USA president has extorted a foreign leader to trump up charges on his political opponent before an upcoming election?
Vote them out and get someone else in there.
Really, that's all your willing to do?
A president cheats, and extorts others or gets his AG to trump up charges which then influences voters and hence he wins the election.
Then he gets found out, and you will keep him in power, but wait 4 years for the next election?
WOW! Seems to me then that all presidents should be doing this scheme, they have nothing to lose. I mean, they cheat to win their second term, they aren't allowed a third term anyway.
In a perfect world, I suppose we could use impeachment as a lever to pull the moment a president abuses power, but once the precedent has already been set that "it's allowed to slide", it comes across as hyper partisan when people use that as a reason for impeachment after letting it slide for other people. Not saying that makes it right...
I live within a British parliamentary system. Which I think is much better that the USA system. Much better.
If a party wins power, their leader becomes prime minister.
If they do dodgy stuff, like strongly unethical or illegal stuff, then the party can protect the party's reputation by making a vote of no confidence and throwing this prime minister out or leadership and out of the party. They can then elect their own leader who becomes the Prime Minister for the rest of the term.
The party are not held hostage, they are not run by an all powerful dictator. They have the ability to protect the party and the party's reputation and the members of the party can hold their heads high, they don't need to support a crook.
The USA impeachment system really only works if the Party in power is willing to use it. They were willing to use it for Nixon, so Nixon quit. But these are very different times, the Republican party were too scared due to Trump's loyal base, to attempt to kick him out.
The tool is there, the party in power just needs the courage to use it, when put into a very difficult situation by their president.
But consistency is important to people.
For instance, if I was a judge, and had a history of letting people skate on DUIs, but then all of the sudden there's a guy I have a well-established personal grudge against, and throw the book at him when he gets caught. While punishing him is the appropriate move (that should've been happening all along), it's hard to feign objectivity if I've spent 20 years looking the other way on it for everyone else and it'd be hard to see it as anything other than overt bias and a double standard.
USA hasn't had many overtly crook presidents. Nixon got done, and now there is D Trump.
Bill Clinton wasn't exactly a crook. He had an affair. So what? He lied about (of course he did, people don't want to own up when the wife is watching)
Anyway, I don't get this idea you have that other presidents have been doing what D Trump has been doing.
You won't get any arguments from me when suggesting that Trump was a bad president who wasn't fit for the office (that's why I didn't for him),
I'm not even arguing that he was a bad president, I'm saying that he was deeply involved in several illegal and unethical and undemocratic activities to steal the 2020 election. I'm saying such activities are heinous and should be appropriately punished, so that no future president ever even considers trying anything like this again.
but this desperation by some to prove that "he's unequivocally the worst ever, and therefore the only honorable thing for you do to do is abandon your principles on every other issue and vote for my guy so that democrats can do whatever they want" is the thing that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Huh? I'm not saying that people should vote the other guy. I'm saying that presidents should be severely punished for extorting other countries to fake investigations into their political opponents in order to win the next election.
People may not realize it, but it's a big ask.
Imagine if there were a democratic politician who was running who had the same amount of character flaws as Trump. Now imagine that the person they were running against was pro-oil, anti-choice, anti-healthcare, etc... Now imagine that everyone was telling you "you've gotta vote for the latter, it's the only honorable thing to do because the former guy is so bad". I'm guessing that wouldn't sit right, correct?
I wouldn't vote for a leader president or prime ministor that tries to illegally steal or overturn an election. It doesn't matter if I love their policies and hate the policies of the other party.
From my perspective, I would want that leader to go to prison and I would want another party member to become the leader of that party and then I would vote for that party. But if I found that that party knows about all the illegal stuff and still supports the criminal president or prime minister, then I would be very disappointed and wouldn't vote that party.
If you want to know more about me. I've voted right, I've voted left, I've voted centre. I'm not partisan. But then again USA is a very different environment to where I come from.